Walter Kovacs And The Wonders Of Hogwarts
by RTVfan
Summary: The "power" the Dark Lord knows not is a mentally ill vigilante from another universe trapped in the body of an eleven year old witch.
1. Chapter 1

Summery: The "power" the Dark Lord knows not is a mentally ill vigilante from another universe trapped in the body of an eleven year old witch.

I don't own "Watchmen". DC Comics does(though it was written, drawn, and created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons). I don't own "Harry Potter" either. That belongs to a bunch of semi-anonymous men in suits, but was written and created by JK Rowling. As if you needed to be told that.

CHAPTER 1:

Rorschach exited Karnak in a stiff, obsessive gait, his mind profoundly disturbed upon discovering that one of his crazy conspiracy theories turned out to be true for once. Blocking his path was Doctor Manhattan, the_ last_ person he'd be able to best in a fight.

"Out of my way. People have to be told."

"You know I can't let you do that."

"Suddenly you discover humanity. Convenient."

Rorschach takes off his mask, and stares at the big, blue godhead with his own eyes.

"If you'd cared from the start, none of this would've happened."

"I can change almost anything...but I can't change human nature" answered Jon.

"Of course, you must protect Veidt's new Utopia. One more body amongst foundations makes little difference. Well, what are you waiting for? Do it..."

Jon hesitates, observing the utter madness and despair in the redheaded man's eyes. He didn't want to kill Rorschach, despite not really caring if he lived or not. But Rorschach would never let Adrian's secret remain so for very long.

"DO IT!"

Doctor Manhattan reluctantly granted his wish, ripping Rorschach apart atom by atom until nothing was left of him but a blood stain on the snow. Of course, this took place within the blink of an eye.

"NOOOOOOOO!" screamed Dreiberg as he runs inside to pummel Ozymandias...

But the story doesn't end there. As Manhattan told Adrian Veidt, the smartest man on the planet and the murderer of millions, "Nothing ever ends".

Shaking all over, Harry pulled himself up. His head was spinning as though he'd just traveled miles by Floo powder. Slowly, he gathered together his wand and the Sorting Hat, and, with a huge tug, retrieved the glittering sword from the mouth of the basilisk's mouth.

Then came a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried towards her, she sat up. Her bemused eyes traveled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, over Harry, in his blood-soaked robes, then to the diary in his hand. Then she looked downwards at her own robes, equally filthy. She drew a great, shuddering gasp and shouted "WHERE AM I?!"

"It's all right" said Harry, holding up the diary, and showing Ginny the fang hole, "Riddle's finished. Look! Him _and _the basilisk. C'mon, Ginny, let's get out of here-"

Rorschach was confused. Who was Ginny? Why did he appear to have a little girl's body? Who was this boy talking to him? What exactly was this place? It looked nothing like Karnak. _Must investigate later. First, follow this boy..._

"Ginny, everything is going to be okay. Please, we have to hurry! Follow me and Fawkes."

Rorschach turned his head around to find a strange looking, crimson bird of unknown origin waiting for them, hovering in the Chamber entrance. He wished Daniel, who was an avian expert, was still around to inform him what species this "Fawkes" was. Speaking of which, wasn't Rorschach supposed to be dead? He specifically asked Osterman to kill him, knowing that the superhuman would never let him tell the world about Veidt's atrocity. Good thing he planned ahead and dropped off his journal at the office of the _New Frontiersman_.

Was this the afterlife? _Hmm...not what I, nor anybody else expected it to be like. Or perhaps I've been reincarnated. Both me and boy have British accents. Never been to the British Isles. Can't pinpoint where exactly I am..._

"Who is Riddle?"

"Tom Riddle, the man you were talking to in your diary" said Harry as he urged Rorschach/Ginny forward; they stepped over the motionless coils of the dead basilisk, through the echoing gloom, and back into the tunnel. It appeared to Rorschach that they were deep below the Earth, if this was Earth. He then heard the stone doors close behind them with a soft hiss.

After a few minutes' progress up the dark tunnel, a distant sound of slowly shifting rocked reached Harry's ears.

"Ron!" Harry yelled, speeding up. "Ginny's okay! I've got her!"

Rorschach heard this "Ron" give a strangled cheer, and then he and the boy turned the next bend to see his eager face staring through the sizable gap he had managed to make in the rock fall.

"_Ginny!" _Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first. "You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened?"

Rorschach observed this boy. He looked a lot like himself- like Walter- back when he was around his age, which Rorschach assumed was eleven or twelve. 'Cept this boy, Ronald, was a lot taller. So was the boy with the messy black hair and glasses. Rorschach didn't mind. He was used to being shorter than average.

"Passed out. Don't remember what happened" he answered in Ginny's soft voice, half lying. He honestly had no idea what happened, or what kind of trouble these three kids had gotten themselves into. But whoever this "Tom Riddle" character was, Rorschach was glad that he was dead. The last thing you want to do around Rorschach is harm a child.

_How was he talking to this girl inside her diary? Was she trading notes with him in this place, wherever it was? Potential pedophile, the late Thomas Riddle. Hrmmm..._

A second later, Harry squeezed out.

"How come you've got a _sword?_" said Ron, gaping at the glittering weapon in Harry's hand.

"I'll explain when we get out of here," said Harry with a sideways glance at Rorschach/Ginny, who then nonchalantly asked what type of bird Fawkes was.

"He's a phoenix. He's Dumbledore's. Saved both of our lives."

Rorschach then looked at the flaming red bird fluttering behind Harry, bowing his head in solemn thanks. Fawkes responded in kind.

_Fawkes has some understanding of human behavior. Must investigate further. I suspect that I'm in a boarding school based on how they're dressed. Possibly a school run for special children. Phoenix's don't exist, but these children seem to believe they do._

"But-"

"Later," Harry said shortly. He didn't think it was a good idea to tell Ron yet who'd been opening the Chamber, not in front of Ginny, anyway. The poor girl looked like she was in shock. "Where's Lockhart."

"Back there," said Ron, still puzzled but jerking his head up the tunnel toward the pipe. "He's in a bad way. Come and see."

Rorschach was interested in who Lockhart was, and why he was hurt. Led by Fawkes, whose wide scarlet wings emitted a soft golden glow in the darkness, they walked all the way back to the mouth of the pipe. Gilderoy Lockhart was sitting there, humming placidly to himself.

"His memory's gone," said Ron. "The Memory Charm backfired. Hit him instead of us. Hasn't got a clue who he is, or where he is, or who we are. I told him to come and wait here. He's a danger to himself."

Lockhart peered god-naturedly up at them all.

"Hello," he said. "Odd sort of place, this, isn't it? Do you live here?"

Rorschach was about to answer in the negative, but Ron cut him off.

"No", raising his eyebrows at Harry.

Harry bent down and looked up the long, dark pipe.

"Have you thought how we're going to get back up this?" he said to Ron.

Ron shook his head, but Fawkes the phoenix had swooped past Harry and was now fluttering in front of him, his beady eyes bright in the dark. He was waving his long golden tail feathers. Harry looked uncertainly at him.

"He looks like he wants you to grab hold..." said Ron, looking perplexed. "But you're much too heavy for a bird to pull up there-"

"Fawkes," said Harry "isn't an ordinary bird." He turned quickly to the others. "We've got to hold on to each other. Ginny, grab Ron's hand. Professor Lockhart-"

"He means you," said Rob sharply to Lockhart.

"You hold Ginny's other hand-"

Harry tucked the sword and the Sorting Hat into his belt, Ron took hold of the back of Harry's robes, and Harry reached out and took hold of Fawke's hot tail feathers.

An extraordinary lightness seemed to spread through his whole body and the next second, in a rush of wings, they were flying upward through the pipe. Harry could hear Lockhart dangling below him, saying, "Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!"

Rorschach was easily as impressed, wondering how exactly this was possible. He pondered the idea of this being some type of genetically engineered bird designed to help out kids and stupid adults in need, somewhat similar to Adrian Veidt's pet lynx, Bubastis.

The chill air was whipping through this Ginny girl's hair, and before Rorschach stopped enjoying the ride, it was over- all four of them were hitting the floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and as Lockhart straightened his hat, the sink that hid the pipe was sliding back into place.

_Hrmmm. Why would would a dungeon be hid under a bathroom sink?_ wondered Rorschach.

As Rorschach turned around, he was momentarily stunned to see a translucent, ugly girl with glasses goggling at him and the dark haired boy.

"It's okay, Ginny. It's just Myrtle."

"You're alive", said Myrtle blankly to Harry.

"There's no need to sound so disappointed," he said grimly, wiping flecks of blood and slime off his glasses.

"Oh, well...I'd just been thinking...if you had died, you'd have been welcome to share my toilet," said Myrtle, blushing silver.

"Urgh!" said Ron and Rorschach simultaneously as they left the bathroom for the dark, deserted corridor outside. "Harry! I think Myrtle's grown _fond_ of you! You've got competition, Ginny!"

"Hrmmm" replied Rorschach, not knowing what else to say. Rorschach was asexual, not knowing anything about dating...or love...or any other such civilian nonsense.

"Where now?" said Ron, with an anxious look at Ginny. Harry pointed.

Fawkes was leading the way, glowing gold along the corridor. The strode after him, and moments later, found themselves outside Professor McGonagall's office. Rorschach observed that this place was indeed a boarding school, but the hallway look positively _medieval_. So they were in a castle. _Either this is a private school for trust fund babies, or I'm stuck in a poorly funded, loosely regulated insane asylum. Some afterlife._

Harry knocked and pushed the door open.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N I know this will probably date the story and may put you all into a sour mood before reading this particular chapter, but I'd like to dedicate it to everyone who died in Newtown, Connecticut yesterday morning(12/14/2012). It was a horrible, horrible crime. RIP.

CHAPTER 2

For a moment there was silence as Harry, Ron, Rorschach, and Lockhart stood in the doorway, covered in muck and slime and(in Harry's case) blood.

Rorschach immediately observed four adults sitting in the rustic looking office room. Two males and two females, each sitting across from one another. The ones sitting on the left hand side attracted his attention first. The adult male was an average sized gentleman of indeterminate age(though Rorschach assumed he was in his late forties, a few years older than himself), balding, but with enough red hair in the back to make an educated guess that this was Ronald and Ginny's father. Sitting next to the man was a short, fat female of around the same age as the male, maybe a tad younger, also with the same intense shade of hair color. "_This must be their mother_" Rorschach noted. Then there was a scream.

"_Ginny!"_

The two parents ran straight to Rorschach, the father picking him(er...her) off of her feet into a giant bear hug, whispering good tidings about how glad he was to see her and so worried and so glad to see that she was okay. When he finally let Rorschach down, the mother gave an equally forceful hug with plenty of tears to spare. The entire time, Rorschach had to hide his utter revulsion at these shows of affection because these people thought that they were hugging their daughter and not him.

Once he was let go of, Rorschach brushed his clothes off with his uselessly dainty hands a little and looked past the parents in order to gaze upon the third person in the room. He was quite old, maybe a centenarian even, wizened looking, but with a distinct sparkle in his light, bright blue eyes that confirmed to Rorschach that this man was cunning and someone to watch out for. His long, gray wizard's beard trailed down his chest to his belly button, where the hair was then tied together with what looked like a little piece of white string. His clothing was outrageously eccentric and out of date. Back in Rorschach's world, it was the type of garb that might have been worn by a costumed hero, or perhaps more appropriately given the narcissism and mental illness required to dress that way, a supervillain. His glasses were half moon spectacles, which led Rorschach to assume that he read a lot and was perhaps an academic, or at least the Principle or Dean of this.. this...whatever it was.

Looking outside the window, Rorschach saw nothing but green rolling green hills as far as his eyes could wander. Stepping forward to get a closer look, Rorschach then came upon a great body of water not too far below the room they were now in.

"_...This has to be Scotland. Makes sense. This is a castle. And it's a boarding school. A boarding school for people who look like rejects from the Society for Creative Anachronism. The Dean looks like Merlin the wizard...or Gandalf...or that painting of Odin I saw at the museum last week. Wonder what his deal is. They all have one. Possible homosexual."_

The other woman in the room, who had been idly standing by the Dean like a sentry a moment ago, was now taking great, steadying gasps at Harry, clutching her chest as she went. Fawkes the phoenix went whoosing past Harry's ear and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder, just as Harry found himself and Ron being swept into the redhead's mom's tight embrace. Rorschach tried to smile at this Hallmark moment, but he could only give a small grimace.

"You saved her! You saved her! _How_ did you do it?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," said the other woman weakly.

"_Woman has thick, practically indiscernible Scottish accent. Yep. Scotland. Harry is a hero, but also a regular troublemaker at this school judging by the posture of teacher woman. Have to monitor him more closely."_

The mother then let go of Harry, seemingly very reluctantly. Harry hesitated for a moment, and then walked over to the Dean's desk and laid upon it a quite battered and trash-dump worthy looking black witch's hat, a ruby-encrusted sword, and what remained of Tom Riddle's diary.

Then Harry started telling the adults in the room everything. Rorschach was all ears during the tale too, which took the young boy almost fifteen minutes to tell. Apparently, from what Rorschach could infer, this castle _was_ a boarding school, but not a typical one. It was a school of _magic. _Of real, honest to God _sorcery._ Harry explained how he had been regularly hearing a disembodied voice lately, how Hermione(whoever that was. Probably one of his friends. Maybe his girlfriend) had finally realized that he was hearing a basilisk in the pipes; how he and Ron had followed some spiders into the forest, that Aragog(a giant spider apparently) had told them where the last victim of the basilisk had died; how he had guessed that Moaning Myrtle(the ghost they had encountered earlier) had been the victim, and that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets(the place that Rorschach had woken up in after being disintegrated by Doctor Manhattan) might be in the bathroom...

_Hrmmm..._

"Very well," prompted Professor McGonagall(the Scottish woman) as Harry paused, "so you found out where the entrance was- breaking a hundred school rules into pieces along the way, I might add- but how on _earth_ did you all get out of there alive, Potter?"

So Harry, his voice now growing hoarse from all this talking, told them about Fawke's timely arrival and about the Sorting Hat(the dirty witch's hat on the table) giving him the sword. But then he faltered. He had so far avoided mentioning Riddle's diary- or Ginny. He looked straight at Rorschach, who had been standing by Ginny's mother and father in an unnaturally stoic matter(for a traumatized little girl at least), and wondered..._"What if they expelled her?". _Rorschach couldn't read Harry's mind of course, but he could see it on his face, clear as the day is long, that he was struggling to tell the adults in the room that Ginny had been harmed by this Tom Riddle character.

Instinctively, Harry looked over at Dumbledore(the Dean's name), who smiled faintly, the flames from the fireplace glancing off of his half-moon spectacles.

"What interests _me_ most,"said Dumbledore gently, "is how Lord Voldemort managed to enchant Ginny, when my sources tell me he is currently in hiding in the forests of Albania."

Rorschach's mind started racing.

"_So supervillains **do** exist here! I may still be in my own world. The real one. Just trapped in a secret society of bewitching Luddites. Still time to tell world about Adrian's delusional plot._

"_Lord Voldemort" is a supervillain's nom de guerre if I ever heard one. Beats "Moloch the Mystic" any day in terms of creativity. Riddle must have corrupted Ginny through the journal she was writing in. Somehow. If he's in Albania, maybe he can control his consciousness and spread it out over long distances. But where did **she** go?..._

"W-what's that?" said Mr. Weasley(the father) in a stunned voice. "_You-Know-Who? _En-enchant _Ginny? _But Ginny's not...Ginny hasn't been...has she?"

"It was this diary," said Harry quickly, picking it up and showing it to Dumbledore. "Riddle wrote it when he was sixteen..."

Dumbledore took the diary from Harry and peered keenly down his long, crooked nose at its burnt and soggy pages.

"Brilliant," he said softly. "Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen."

"_Aren't they all?"_ mused Rorschach to himself.

Dumbledore turned around to the Weasley's who were looking utterly bewildered. Rorschach was just pretending to be, however. His mind was already thinking up hundreds of new paranoid hypotheses.

"Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school...traveled far and wide...sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here."

"_Thanks for the school lesson, teacher."_

"But, Ginny," said Mrs. Weasley(the mother). "What's our Ginny got to do with- with- _him?_"

Harry began to tighten up. He didn't know what to do. Earlier in the year, before school had even started, he had been given a harsh reprimand by the Ministry of Magic for using magic in front of muggles outside of school. It hadn't really been him- it had been Dobby, the house-elf who belonged to the Malfoy's, but the Ministry didn't care and had said that if it happened again, he would be uniformly expelled from Hogwarts. His wand would be broken in half, and his life amongst the Wizards would be gone forever. He couldn't bear the same thing happening to Ginny. Hell, it would probably be worse for her. People who couldn't perform magic, whether it was due to their muggle birth or due to breaking the law, like poor old Hagrid, were looked down upon by wizards and witches in this culture.

Rorschach had seen the nervousness in young Harry. Right away, he concocted a story right out of thin air based on his own personal theories of the case.

"Riddle's diary" said Rorschach. "I've been writing in it, and he's been writing back all year long-"

"_Ginny!_" said Mr. Weasley, flabbergasted. "Haven't I taught you _anything? _What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself _if you can't see where it keeps it's brain? _Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that- it was _clearly_ full of Dark Magic-"

"I'm very sorry, daddy. Riddle corrupted me into doing it. I didn't know what I was getting into."

"Where did you _find_ it?" demanded Mr. Weasley.

"_Uh oh."_

After a few moments hesitation, somebody winged it for him.

"She didn't find it herself, Mr. Weasley" said Harry,

"Come again?" asked Mr. Weasley, suddenly looking away from Rorschach and up at the boy.

"Lucius Malfoy gave it to her. In Flourish and Blotts. I saw him pick up her old Transfiguration book and slip the diary inside before the beginning of the school year. I didn't know what he was doing until just recently, sir."

"That's a serious accusation to make, Mr. Potter" said McGonagall.

"I know it is. But I know I saw it. It all adds up. Malfoy intensely dislikes all of the Weasley's, so he would do anything to try and humiliate and hurt them. And he used to be involved with Voldemort-"

The Weasley's(minus "Ginny") and McGonagall all gasp.

"- I meant _You-Know-Who," _sighed Harry.

"I don't think Ginny should be hearing this. I think she's been through enough already" said Mrs. Weasley, cupping Rorschach's face with a loving embrace.

"I concur with you, Molly. Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away," Dumbledore commanded in a soft but firm voice. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort." He strode over to the door and opened it.

What was interesting to Rorschach was that Dumbledore was right in a sense, albeit only accidentally. After seeing millions of people die because of Ozymandias, his already _very_ low threshold for injustice had been shattered, pissed on, and raped and killed in an alley just like his dead mother. This little side-trip into the occult helped calm him down a little bit, but he was still plenty pissed off.

"Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," added Dumbledore, twinkling kindly down at Rorschach. Rorschach in return gave a nonchalant look of mild gratitude. Dumbledore noticed this, but didn't react on it.

"You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out Mandrake juice- I daresay the basilik's victims will be waking up any moment."

"_Great. **More** victims."_

"So Hermione's okay!" said Ron brightly.

"There has been no lasting harm done, Ginny," said Dumbledore.

Mrs. Weasley led Rorschach out the door, and Mr. Weasley followed, still looking deeply shaken.

_Have to get out. Have to think of a plan. Have to..._

As the Weasley's all walked down the long corridor to the infirmary, Rorschach mused upon what to write in his next journal entry:

_A world unto itself. A world of the occult. A world comprising solely of wizards and witches, of ghosts and monsters. Instead of being in a story inspired by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, I'm in one inspired by Roald Dahl. So much to investigate..."_


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Hey guys. I'm so sorry for taking such along with this. I have a bit of writer's block. Every time I think I have the chapter just the way I want it, some plot hole comes up which forces me to rewrite the entire thing. I promise that I'll be done with it all real soon, but for now, I'm going to post an excerpt from Rorschach's diary that will hopefully, with your infinite patience, tide you over. It was meant to be the start to the chapter I'm doing, so I guess I can call this "Part 1" of Chapter 3, despite being much shorter than Part 2.

_CHAPTER 3 (PART 1)_

_RORSCHACH'S JOURNAL _

_September 1st,1993_

_Died in Antarctica but reborn in another world. New life bearable but unpleasant. Have to deal with women's clothing. Have to live in little girls body. I had nightmares about the man made holocaust started by Veidt for the first few nights, and had further nightmares about suddenly turning female for the next few weeks afterward, but I'm over both of them now. The girl who I am involuntarily possessing is named Ginevra Molly Weasley. Ginny for short. Ginevra is Italian for Guinevere I'm told. Wonderful, now I'm associated with a harlot. May as well call me Lilith or Inanna. Why do the names in this culture have a bizarre archaic quality to them? It's worse than Atticus Finch and all those hilljacks down in the South, or the numerous minority crack babies with unpronounceable, made up monikers who lived and died right next to me in the tenement where I used to slum._

_Why- how- did this happen? More than three months have passed, and I am no closer towards finding out the answers than I was at the beginning- or is it the ending? I could be dead for all I know. This might be Heaven. Might be Hell. Might be Fiddler's Green. But it is unquestionably not the place I grew up in. It is childlike and whimsical and full of eccentric adults who are named after constellations in the sky, but can't even pronounce words like "detective" or "electricity". It is a world of magic._

_There are two layers to this world: the normal, everyday world, filled with normal citizens and their lives, and wizards and witches who live in secrecy from the topmost layer. When certain people are born in this world, they possess the (genetic?- It's not clear) ability to channel and shape a very mysterious, physics defying energy that the community at large charmingly calls magic. The theory goes that this energy rests within their very selves: the "core of their being", and it stays with them for the rest of their lives, never waxing or waning. An infinite resource. The ability to control this energy has to be fine tuned through years of study and dedicated instruction by a superior. Most Brits send their kids to Hogwarts, a boarding school for wizards and witches set up in Scotland which is invisible to normal people. They do not invoke pagan gods or make deals with demons or sprites, or use any occult rituals of any kind, although admittedly there is a lot of observance paid to the occult, in a haphazard kind of way. They are also primitive in a lot of other ways, which I will get to._

_This world is nearly eight years into the future relative to my own. When I died, it was October of 1985, and when I woke up, it was May of 1992. One moment I was in the cold void of the southernmost continent, and the next, I was in the underground caverns of Albion. Other, smaller but more disturbing "A Sound Of Thunder" type changes exist alongside that mad revelation. So far I've discovered zero counterparts to my crimefighting brethren the Minutemen or the Crimebusters. There is no Veidt Enterprises. No Doctor Manhattan. No records of anyone named Jon Osterman,Wally Weaver, or Janey Slater working at the Gila Flats test base either in fact. No Milton Glass. No 51st state of Vietnam. No Happy Harry's bar anywhere in New York City that I could find. No gang calling themselves the "Knot Tops". No Hector Godfrey editing the New Frontiersman, and no Doug Roth writing at the Nova Express, for neither periodical exists here. VMN does not exist either; some monstrosity called MTV does in it's place. Very few electric cars roam the under lit freeways, and technology in general seems at least ten or twenty years behind my own world. Wizards eschew things not made by them, by muggles, so my predicament is even worse. I'm living in a community that's at least **one-hundred years behind mine. **Although in many respects wizards outstrip regular people, in terms of longevity and resistance to injury they certainly do(some might even call them superhuman), their common sense is severely lacking. The greatest wizard philosophers, theologians, theoreticians, and scientists would probably be laughed out of any prestigious muggle university for their gross incompetence. It's just as well. I'm not Ivy League brass either._

_Magical culture's anonymity from the rest of the world stems from mass memory erasure. Damnation memoriae is their entire foundation. Squads of fascistic "Obliviators" prowl the cities and countryside alike for muggles who may have seen something- anything- supernatural as an excuse to destroy the continuity of their lives. The theory goes that "Muggles", the epithet that they use for non-wizards and non-witches, would go crazy and suddenly start trying to killing them again Matthew Hopkins style if they found about the existence of magic. In my opinion, that's a government enforced delusion. Judging by my own experiences with bigots of many colors, a few religious zealots would get up in arms, but they would be poorly organized and wouldn't know what to look for. Most witches don't have warts on their faces, and not all wizards don pointed hats. _

_In this world, the Cold War officially ended two years ago with the U.S.S.R collapsing under the weight of it's own contradictions and thankfully without any nuclear fallout. The Berlin Wall fell nearly four years ago. Forcibly estranged family members saw each other for the first time in years, and Checkpoint Charlie earned a very nice gold watch for itself. Ironically, neither event needed mass murder for it to happen. Tricky Dick resigned from office in '74 after mass protests concerning the bugging scandal at the Watergate Hotel(in my world, that event was heavily censored and eventually forgotten about). On September 8th of the same year, Nixon was pardoned by his replacement Gerald Ford for all of his crimes. Nice. Then came Jimmy Carter in '77, a one term abject failure liberal from Georgia who made us look weak in front of the Iranians. Ronald Reagan, the old RKO cowboy actor, was President throughout this version of the 1980s up until a number of years ago when his simian looking running mate took over. Reagan was by all accounts an OK Commander in Chief, but Bush looks like he won't be reelected after not keeping his promise to lower taxes(and for vomiting on a Japanese diplomat at a U.N meeting). Now some sexual deviant Democrat from Arkansas is in the running. How do I properly literate an eyeroll? _

_On the British side of things, the current Prime Minister is John Major, a _

_None of the above really effect me though, since, as I have inferred, the wizards are all isolationists. Speaking of which, I must introduce Ginevra's parents._

_Arthur(the patriarch) is a bureaucrat who works at the Ministry of Magic, the wizard's federal government. Most countries have similar systems for their wizardmen, except in places like Australia and New Zealand where descendents of convicted criminal wizards now homestead off the land in relative libertarian freedom and isolation(and the same story applies to Indian wizards in the U.S). Arthur earns a steady pay in the Misuse Of Muggle Artifacts Department to keep his family alive, but since this is a plutocracy, he is undermined at every turn by the idle rich. He should be making more than he earns. I still can't understand why scarcity still exists since wizard's have the ability to duplicate anything in unlimited quantities, but the economy may have to do with the goblins, who have a monopoly over the economy and are greedy little bastards to begin with(Doesn't this sound familiar?). Arthur's wife Molly is a homemaker, and she is a typical married woman. She cares about her kids and husband deeply when she's not henpecking them with cryptic commands. She must have let herself go at some point, typical of women her age, as she is a little rotund, although I'm she prefers to call herself "zaftig". Both of Arthur and Molly's records are clean of corruption as far as I can tell, but I am at severe disadvantage. Ginevra, ergo me, is indefinitely banned from having any kid of writing pad, diary, or journal after the Tom Riddle incident. Molly and Arthur inspect my room daily to see if I have smuggled anything in. Children have very little legal independence from their guardians during the best of times, so I have forced myself to learn the "Disillusionment" spell to hide it from them and other prying adults. For the remainder of my stay here, I'm either going to have to run away from home or stick with the Weasley's if I want to truly be free. Since the Weasley's are good people who feed their children well, I'll stick with them for now until I can find a more permanent residence. _

_No costumed heroes appear to exist in this world at all. Disturbingly, the very concept of a hero, masked or otherwise, is treated by non magical adults with patronizing anecdotes from their childhood. They speak with pride about how they wanted to grow up to be Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman when they were kids, but "outgrew" such things when they learned to read real literature. Heroes in the popular culture are relegated to the world of comic books, cartoons, and the occasional live action movie, meant only for children and social pariahs. If they only knew what it was really like. One man though did write a comic book in this version of the 1980s about costumed heroes as nothing but neurotic screw ups. Heh. At least someone got that part right. Must either kill that man someday or give him a Pulitizer for diving the truth so thoroughly. Who knows, perhaps he's a wizard himself. The comic is entitled "Doom Patrol", and the writer is Grant Morrison._

_On the other hand compared to regular people, magicals retain an unhealthily high level of hero worship. Merlin the White is treated tantamount to a deity. Epithets like "Merlin's Beard", "Merlin's Pants", and even "Merlin's Balls" are used in place of "Goddamn", "Oh my God", and other blasphemies. What did Merlin do to get wizards to refer to him like this? Must have missed something in the Arthurian myths. Or maybe the legends are different here. Albus Dumbledore, the maestro of Hogwarts, is treated with an undue amount of privilege for merely being an academic. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein never got treated nearly as well as him. Antoine Lavoisier even died during the French Reign of Terror just for being one. Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, killed the evil warlock Tom Riddle(renaming himself "Lord Voldemort" sometime after he came of age) when he was only a baby. Harry's parents died protecting him, and he grew up with his abusive Aunt and Uncle(on the mother's side) in Muggle land not knowing about his birthright until two years ago on his birthday. That's his story. I asked around how an infant could possibly kill a grown man, especially a homicidal grown man, and I have turned up short so far. Sounds unbelievable. Probably true._

_The late evil warlock was an analogue for Hitler, wanting to exterminate everyone who couldn't trace wizard/witch heritage all the way down the line in their families genealogy, and he also wanted to subjugate others who lacked the perfect 100% "blood purity". Riddle founded a cult of terrorist minions to help him with this, all bearing the same "Dark Mark", a tattoo that forms the image of a glittering green skull with a snake protruding from it's mouth. It can be found on either forearm, usually the right forearm. These minions have for the most part been sent to wizard prison, a giant stone complex called "Azkaban", but a couple have faked stories that they were either coerced or brainwashed into helping Riddle(tell that to Leslie Van Houten and the rest of the Manson Family). Chief among these liars are Lucius Malfoy, the same rich man which gave Ginevra the accursed diary containing of Voldemort's soul to begin with, and started the chain of events which ended with her dying and me somehow taking control of her body. He will be the first to be punished. That might be my purpose here: to clean up the corruption of people too oblivious to do it themselves. Perhaps I die, and am reborn somewhere else in perpetuity, destined to the same thing forever._

_When I was at Charlton Home, I devoured their meager book collection. Among the forgotten titles were H.G Wells' "Men Like Gods" and Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber". Later on, I watched the Mirror Universe episodes of "Star Trek", and much further along into my adulthood, "Doctor Who". A year ago, I savored Robert A. Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of Justice". These science fiction stories introduced me to the concept of parallel universes. In my spare time(and I have a lot of spare time), I did research into the real life possibilities of such a thing, and I was then educated by the works of Doctor Manhattan, Veidt, and many other intellectuals. Manhattan may have used his more esoteric special abilities to transport me here, to a real life parallel universe. In his mind, it may have been a compromise. Instead of killing me outright like I wanted, he sends my consciousness forward here, to this life. But **why** this life? Why this body? Is there some special purpose, some kind of poetic symmetry between I and this girl who has been robbed of her bodily vessel? Did events in this timeline alter so radically from my own that I was destined to be a magical red haired British magical girl born in the 1980's instead of a "muggle" red haired American boy born in the 1940's? Why are there no heroes?_

_Doctor Manhattan's very existence demonstrates the cold truth that consciousness is not entirely materially based. It exists independently of the of human body. Manhattan(formerly Osterman) reassembled himself from nothing, lacking but a single atom to his name after the accident at the Gila Flats test base in 1959. How could he do that without a metaphysical anchor? How could Voldemort store his soul into a diary? This Cartesian conundrum will have to be answered later._

_Now that I'm caught up, where am I now? Currently riding the train to Ginevra's second year at the boarding school where this all started. Earlier had young boy named Colin Creevey sitting next to me in my compartment, hounding me about the incident in the Chamber Of Secrets. I bribed him with a chocolate frog to move to another compartment. All the other Weasley kids are off on their own; Ronald with his friend Harry Potter and his future girlfriend Hermione Granger, Fred and George off with their partner in crime Lee Jordan, Percy with his girlfriend Penelope Clearwater(I've caught him masturbating to her picture multiple times), and Bill and Charlie are grown up and out of the house. _

_The summer was spent in exhaustive research. Since Daniel is not present, I had to consult the technical and academic literature on my own, which is admittedly not my best area. I developed my own weaponry, as well as a new face again. It matters not that I am stuck as a female, for Ginny Weasley is nubile and athletic. _

_Not any closer to finding out how I got here, or what happened to the young lady, however._

_I went to the local library every day, resisting succumbing to the eternal temptation of reliving my childhood._

_Let me continue from where I last left off, me leaving the Hogwarts infirmary in the sure hands of Molly and Arthur Weasley._


End file.
